The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (50 page)

The approval for the elevation of Regina Laudis was made in 1975 by Pope Paul VI. The date for the ceremony was set for the feast of Saint Scholastica—February 10, 1976—the year of the United States’ bicentennial, which was fitting, since Regina Laudis was the first women’s abbey founded on American soil
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Reverend Mother was elected abbess. Her attendants for the abbatial blessing were her brother John Duss and her good friend Ella Grasso, governor of Connecticut and coincidentally the first woman elected to the state’s highest office. The celebrant was Archbishop John Whealon, who bestowed the crozier symbolizing the abbess authority for life
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From that day forward Reverend Mother was called Lady Abbess. She named Mother David prioress, the official who would govern the abbey in her absence, and Mother Jerome was appointed to the newly added office of subprioress
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The jubilation that day was contagious. So many people attended that, although no one ever came into the cloister in those days, we had to open the common room to receive all of them. The Franciscan community from nearby Meriden walked into the cloister en masse. That also had never happened before. Previously, nuns of other orders came individually with a specific purpose. But this was the whole community walking in the gate. It was a sign of freedom
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My ever-faithful Maria spent the entire day on her feet, interviewing and photographing our guests—all two hundred of them. She told me later the day had been one of the most satisfying and transforming experiences she had ever had. The topper was Lady Abbess and Father Prokes leading the Community in a folk dance of celebration. Their presence together, guiding us, was a gift of total reverence
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After the festivities were over and nighttime fell, I was in my place in the choir and saw our Lady Abbess alone, kneeling. There was such joy radiating from her face. She was in her sixties at the time, but looked as though she were forty
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Elevation gave her a perfection of her call. She put our foundation into the mission of the modern Church. In days to come, when things got stuck and seemingly impossible to move, I would think, “The hell with it, Lady Abbess will always be here.” As far as I was concerned, Lady Abbess was the Church
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The seventies began what would be a period of development at Regina Laudis. Reverend Mother Benedict had made our foundation in rural Connecticut, and now, as abbess, she remained resolute that dedication to the land and, more importantly, its development to full potential would be a prime commitment. “Our land”, she said, “anticipates the very purpose of a monastic community—identification with and fulfillment of the Christian mystery in its own surroundings.” We do live by the labor of our hands
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Much of our four hundred acres is forest, which has allowed us to harvest wood both for lumber and firewood and provides undisturbed areas for meditation and reflection. This wooded acreage is traversed by streams and wetlands, making its care and management challenging
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We women learned to work this land ourselves as an integral part of our Benedictine spirituality. The soil was hard and rocky, but Lady Abbess was determined that the Community would draw its sustenance from the property
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Under the stewardship of Mother Stephen, about a quarter of the land was now being cultivated for pastures and hayfields, orchards, raised-bed vegetables, flower and herb gardens, berry bushes and grape vineyards. There are also areas managed for Christmas tree production—Mother Stephen’s personal passion—which, over the years, has contributed to our revenue
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As the beef herd expanded its number, the land it grazed also expanded. Peripheral fencing was installed to enclose large pasture areas. The hay barn was enlarged to include a sizable feeding area, and a separate paddock was created for the bull. Ways of managing calves were introduced. It became necessary to plant and to harvest more and more hay. We began to grow corn silage, which meant plowing up alternating hay fields and planting corn each year to supplement the hay and pasture available
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The addition of feeder pigs and the gift of several Cheviot ewes from our benefactress Lauren Ford necessitated building additional barns and creating more rotational paddocks. Mother Ruth Barry, who had been a nurse before she entered in 1968, took charge of the sheep
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Our dairy began with Holstein cows in 1975 and later switched to the Dutch Belted breed. The Dutch Belts give less milk than other breeds, but it has a greater percentage of milk solids, more suitable to our cheese-making operation
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Many of our women operate tractors and other large machines necessary to cultivate the land. For a long while, the monastery owned only one tractor—now considered an antique but still in operation for spraying fruit trees. Our fleet has grown to a dozen, and I think I’m safe in saying that Mother Augusta, who took over the management of the land from Mother Stephen, knows all of them
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Mother Augusta confirmed, “I think I’ve managed to use just about every machine we have. Subsequently I have taught other women here to drive tractors and to use the hay machinery as well as chain saws, lawn mowers and brush cutters.

“We now have various sizes of tractors, from the very small John Deere 320 to the largest, a JD 2950, used for its bucket loader and superstrong pulling power in the operation of our biggest machines—compost turner, Bush Hog rotary mower, corn and grass choppers. For haying we have a haybine that cuts the grass, a tedder and rake that toss it and form it into rows, and a baler that compacts it into small square bales.

“I love our machines because they enable us to care for our land well. They enable human beings in general, but they definitely allow us, as women, to do work that we never could even consider otherwise.”

I think a woman approaches a machine differently—not pressing it as hard as a man might, but becoming sensitive to the machine, caring for it—reverencing it, if you will. In a way, machines and tools are extensions of the person. Perhaps women feel this more than men do because we are not as strong and need the machine’s help more
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We try to practice responsible stewardship. We’ve learned to submit to and cooperate with the weather, the land and the animals. Whether we are clearing acres of brush or fields of stone, preparing a seedbed or building a road, milking a cow or managing a whole beefherd, we have had to enter into the rhythm of life itself
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We feel that respect for God’s creation inevitably leads to respect for our fellow men and women. Pope Benedict XVI reminded us during his World Day of Peace message, “Disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence. It becomes more and more evident that there is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men
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Father Prokes told me bluntly one day that I didn’t have a particular area of productivity for the benefit of the Community. He was right. I had been assigned to almost every existing area of work and found I wasn’t a laundress or a cook or, heaven knows, a farmer—as my days of milking and haying attested. Frankly, there are very few monastic jobs I’m capable of doing. I would always try, but I was persistent rather than competent
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One morning, for my garden obedience, I was given a scythe to cut some high grass near the chapel. It was a simple task, but I attacked that patch of grass with such misguided vigor that I injured my neck and shoulder. I had always known I wasn’t as strong as Mother Stephen, and I was constantly trying to match her stamina. It was: anything she can do, I can do. Anything
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I remember once standing behind her in line at suppertime and watching her load her plate with food. I did the same. When I sat down at my place, I looked at the mountain on my plate and just then realized I had to eat all of it
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I whacked away at the grass with a vengeance, using the scythe improperly—I would never ask
how
to do something—and though I could feel a strain I stubbornly kept at it. All of a sudden, there was a sharp stab that all but knocked me off my feet. Next thing I knew I was in Saint Mary’s Hospital in traction for two whole weeks! My rotator cuff had been severely injured, and I had to wear a collar off and on for five years
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—
That hospital visit was the first time I had been outside the monastery in eight years
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This injury took me out of the garden for good. The recovery period cut down my work in the laundry, but that remained a daily obedience for another year. Instead, I was assigned to work in the kitchen. Even with Granny’s training I had never been much of a cook, so I was not overjoyed, especially since even an interim obedience at Regina Laudis can last a long time
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—
That job lasted only a few months. I never knew why; no one told me, and I was too relieved to ask
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I held out hope that I would find my niche in the artwork I continued doing in the studio. My studies there had expanded into portraiture under the guidance of my monastic godmother Estelle Coniff, an art teacher who came to the monastery to give group classes to the Community and remained to work one-on-one with me. But during her critique of a portrait I had sketched—coincidentally of her—Estelle sighed and said, “Sister, I’m sorry but you got caught in the nostril. I don’t think you’re ever going to make a portrait painter. Have you tried typing
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No matter, I was now going to be the Community’s baker. First thing I was asked to make was matzo, and since I hadn’t a hint of how to begin, I called Pop in Los Angeles, who gave me his family’s recipe. It wasn’t long before I was told that I would bake just the regular bread for the Community
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—It was recognized as your
spécialité
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No. I’m sure that concern about long-distance phone bills had more to do with the decision
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Even if it wasn’t my true area of productivity, this obedience resonated comfortably with me. The Russian word for
hospitality
means “bread and salt”. It stems from an old European custom of offering both to guests as a sign of respect. I liked the idea that this humble food is given as a gift between friends. I liked that bread is broken and shared, and that we are nourished by the food and the friendship
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Bread has always been the mainstay of our diet and continues to mean life to us, both physically and spiritually. “I am the bread of life”, Jesus told us. Catholics celebrate this with every Eucharist. Bread is transformed into the Body of Christ
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While the making of bread adheres to rules of science, it is, in fact, more of an art. The correct amounts and the temperatures of flour and water are the same for each loaf, but the weather and even my mood could affect the look and texture of my bread. I came to accept that each loaf was unique, each one unrepeatable, and embraced the differences—sometimes crusty on the outside and, more often than not, soft and fragrant on the inside. Like people
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